Relativity

by Stargate

  Teal’c’s irritation rose to the surface and his lip twisted. He was allowing himself to be irrational, concentrating on phantoms instead of certainties. What advice would Bra’tac have offered him had he been in the room at this moment? The Jaffa imagined a look of fatherly admonishment in the old warrior’s eyes. Walk the line between instinct and logic, Teal’c. Find that path.

  “Yes,” He said the word aloud and it resonated in the spartan room. Teal’c’s instincts told him that there was danger close at hand, unseen, unheard and so far, undetected. His logic told him that there was nothing out there. The sweep teams had gone over the SGC and found no sign of intruders, nothing but the alien bomb. Between the two, the Jaffa knew that the truth lay hidden. He would have to look inside himself to find it; the alternative was the grim possibility that he was affected by some sort of sickness that was fogging his mind.

  Teal’c drew in a deep breath, and let the scent of the tallow fill his senses. “In the kel no’reem, there is only knowing,” he said to the air. “And I will know.”

  A plastic-wrapped package thudded on to the desk in front of Sam, making her jerk up in surprise. Daniel gave her an arch look and smoothed a crease out of the freshly-pressed blue duty jacket he was wearing.

  “I believe these are yours?” he said, nodding at the package.

  Carter saw her service dress uniform inside, neatly folded. “They got them clean already. Great.”

  “That’s the Air Force for you. Fast jets, faster washing machines, apparently.”

  “What were you doing in the base laundry?”

  He pulled at the cuff of his jacket. “I got something on my fatigues,” he frowned. “Some sort of white powdery residue, like dried paint. I don’t know where it came from. Couldn’t get it off…” Daniel nodded to himself. “You know, they have the biggest tumble dryer I’ve ever seen over there? Honestly, you could walk inside it.”

  Sam eyed him. “Uh huh. So you decided to visit the laundry services division and then help them out by bringing me my clean uniform out of some sense of helpfulness…”

  “Sure,” he began.

  “…Not because you’re trying to avoid running into Kinsey again?”

  “Oh.” Daniel shrugged. “Well, maybe.”

  Carter chuckled. “Thanks, anyhow. As you’re running errands for me, how about some coffee and a Danish?”

  Jackson narrowed his eyes. “Don’t push your luck, Major.”

  “Seriously,” she replied. “I’m starting to think I need an intravenous caffeine drip. I’m going around and around on this thing, and it’s making me dopey.” Sam gestured at the deconstructed bomb.

  Daniel folded his arms and gave the device a hard stare. “Jack told me about the whole ‘dud’ thing. What’s up with that?”

  “Wish I knew,” Carter responded. “I’m dead-ending on this. I’ve got nothing to show but more maybes than I had a day ago.” She toyed aimlessly with the package of clean clothes.

  “You did prevent a dangerous explosion, Sam. That’s hardly nothing.”

  “Yeah,” she said glumly, “and I ruined a perfectly good uniform shirt into the bargain.” Sam jerked her chin towards the work desk where her chemical-stained blouse lay under a series of Doctor Lee’s particle sensors. “That’s never going to come out, jet-washers or not...” Her voice trailed off as the words sparked a sudden cascade of thought.

  “Sam?” Daniel asked. “I know that look.”

  All at once it came to Carter in a sudden flood of comprehension. “Stubborn stains. Like they say, you can’t just get them out with any old detergent.”

  “Okay, now you’re being weird,” Jackson retorted. “Lack of rest is making you talk like someone out of a soap powder commercial.”

  She came up out of her chair, suddenly energized, and crossed to where the detonator core of the bomb was resting in a set of clamps. “No, think about it. Forget the device for a second, what about the person who planted it? We know it wasn’t beamed in, so somebody put it there, somebody who could still be on base. If they’d been holding on to this thing for a while, or even if they had been the ones who built it, there would be residual energetic traces from exposure to the naquadria.” Sam halted, her train of thought racing through possibilities. “Doctor Lee, Teal’c and me would all have trace amounts from our limited contact, but the bomber would have twice, maybe three times as high a reading.”

  “So, we scan everyone with a naquada-specific Geiger counter? Do we even have one of those?”

  She shook her head. “A person-by-person check would take too long, and it would let the bomber know we were on to them.”

  “Then we need to find a way to scan everyone in the SGC in secret.”

  A slow smile crossed Sam’s face. “Or all at once.”

  “Oh yeah. This doohickey.” O’Neill gave the steel-colored rectangular box an arch look. “From Thor, right? Some kinda toaster oven, or something.”

  “Not quite,” said Carter, glancing around the medical lab, taking in Jackson and Warner with her explanation “This was a gift from the Asgard, but we haven’t been able to get it to interface successfully with our systems.”

  “That’s an understatement,” said Warner. The doctor leaned in and tapped a couple of controls. The box unfolded into a compact computer console. “We tried to integrate this into an experimental program similar to something that NASA have been working on.” The device gave off a soft hum and Jack saw strings of Asgard runic glyphs tracing across a display screen. “It’s a broad-spectrum biological sensor array. Asgard starships use them to scan planets from orbit. The idea was, we’d set this up here in the SGC and be able to keep an eye on the medical well-being of everyone on base, non-invasively, on a twenty-four seven basis.”

  “So if someone was injured or fell ill, you know about it immediately?” asked Daniel.

  Jack scowled. “It’s a little bit ‘Big Brother’, don’tcha think, Doc?”

  “The point’s moot,” insisted Warner. “We couldn’t make it work. The sensors were too sensitive, setting off alarms every time someone reported in with a sniffle or a hangover.”

  “And the interface to our computers couldn’t handle all the data from hundreds of full-body medical scans, constantly updating in real-time,” added Carter.

  “Not to mention the drain it put on the infirmary’s power grid,” Warner concluded.

  Jack folded his arms. “And you’re telling me you can tweak this thing to filter out all that other stuff and just sweep for somebody with naquadria radiation traces?”

  Sam flashed him a grin and flipped open her laptop. “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re sure this will work?” O’Neill pulled a radio from his pocket. “I don’t want to toss some innocent fella in the stockade just because he happens to be wearing a glow-in-the-dark wristwatch.”

  “I’m sure, Colonel,” she replied.

  “Okay then,” he said with a flourish. “Find me a bad guy.”

  “T,” said the voice from the walkie-talkie. “Got your ears on?”

  “I hear you, O’Neill.” At the colonel’s request, Teal’c had cut short his meditation and joined Lieutenant Everitt on the base’s mid-levels; in all honesty, he welcomed the opportunity, having found no respite in the kel no’reem.

  “Good. I need everyone on the bounce. If we get a hit off this, we may have to move fast.”

  “Understood.” The Jaffa glanced at the officer at his side. “There is only one rule of engagement. No fatalities. We must capture this infiltrator alive.”

  “You still think there’s someone hiding out down here?” Everitt’s tone made it clear how much he disagreed with the idea.

  “I know it,” snarled Teal’c.

  Daniel raised an eyebrow as the Asgard device’s humming grew louder and deeper.

  “Here we go,” said Sam, “spinning it up…”

  Jack eyed the machine warily. “This isn’t like one of those photocopiers, is it? Where you go sterile
if you hang out around them too long?”

  “That’s just an urban legend,” said Warner testily.

  Jackson’s eye was drawn briefly to the open door of the medical lab and the expanse of the main infirmary beyond. He saw figures moving around in there and caught the briefest glimpse of a head of dark hair and a white lab coat.

  Carter’s fingers skipped across the laptop’s keypad as the room’s lights dimmed ever so slightly. “Sensor bloom is reaching full radius. Commencing trace scan.”

  Daniel saw the sweep of the Asgard scanner rendered as a green orb overlaid across a wireframe graphic of Cheyenne Mountain’s interior spaces. Hazy patches of white, like blobs of computer-generated mist, speckled the laptop screen. “Getting some false positives. It’ll take a second for the software to filter out any noise.” As they watched, some of the sensor returns diminished to nothing and winked out.

  “A firm detection there, science lab four,” noted Warner.

  Sam nodded. “That’s the naquadria vial and the bomb components. Another, fainter one in the mess hall.”

  “The good Doctor Lee,” said O’Neill. “He’s at lunch. Said he was going to try the macaroni and cheese.”

  “On the mid-levels…” Warner pointed out another. “Teal’c, yes?”

  Jack nodded. “Yup. That leaves you, Carter.”

  The woman blinked. “Huh. Just a moment. I’ve got to alter the gain. It’s reading me as a much larger return. Too large.”

  “You’re right on top of the scanner, Major,” said O’Neill.

  “That’s not it,” Sam shook her head, and they all heard the warning in her voice. “The sensor field is being reflected off something. I’m getting a feedback echo.”

  “We should up the power,” said Warner. “Just a quick pulse, a single discharge like we were taking an x-ray.”

  “Good call,” Carter typed a string of new commands into the keyboard. “This, this, and there.”

  The Asgard device thrummed with sudden power and Jackson saw something flicker blue-white in the corner of his eye. He turned back to look to the infirmary and found Doctor Wells staring right at him, an expression of mingled sadness and fear across her face; and he knew.

  “Hannah?”

  “Contact,” snapped Sam, “right here, ten meters! But there’s something else! I’m reading two more targets.”

  Jack’s pistol was already in his hand. “Carter?”

  “Energy field… Transphase or optical shift… The scanner output’s interfering with it—”

  “Mother of God!” Warner’s cry cut through the air. “What the hell is that?”

  Behind Hannah Wells, a six-legged insectile creature the size of a man shimmered into solidity, flashes of electrical energy coruscating over its carapace. Daniel saw the woman bolt from the room as the alien brandished a boxy object that could only have been a weapon.

  “Down!” Jack threw himself across the room and shoved Warner aside as the creature fired wildly into the ceiling of the infirmary. Daniel heard a woman’s scream as one of the nurses caught the trailing edge of an energy bolt.

  Sam had her pistol out as well and she unloaded three shots toward the spider-like alien. “It’s a Re’tu!” she called. “Intruder alert!”

  Daniel slammed his fist into the red alarm button on the wall and immediately the base was filled with the whooping of sirens.

  The Re’tu snarled and kicked out with its legs, smashing into a wheeled gurney. The trolley spun away across the room, knocking down an IV stand.

  Jack was shouting into his radio. “Infirmary, code red! We have a Re’tu intruder, potential Foothold situation in progress!”

  The alien fired again, and this time the spread of shots ripped into the lighting strips on the ceiling, shattering the fluorescent tubes and plunging the infirmary into semi-darkness. Daniel caught sight of the insectoid scrambling away, out and into the base.

  “Teal’c!” called O’Neill. “It’s loose!”

  “I will find it,” Jackson heard the terse reply. The Jaffa sounded annoyed.

  He followed Warner into the other room and helped the doctor pull the nurse from the floor and place her on a bed. Warner thrust a penlight at Daniel. “Hold this.” The woman was pale, and he placed a finger against the carotid artery in her neck.

  “Is she dead?”

  The doctor’s shoulders sank and he blew out a breath. “No. Thank god, no.” He leaned closer to the nurse. “Cathy? Cathy, can you hear me?”

  She moaned and her eyelids fluttered. “She’s just stunned,” noted Sam. “Like a zat blast.”

  O’Neill turned at her words. “That’s not their style. Last time the Re’tu were here, they shot up the damn place.”

  Daniel’s thoughts began to catch up with what had just happened. “Hannah… The new doctor, Major Wells. She was with it. They were together.”

  “They’ve used human infiltrators before,” offered Warner.

  Jack grimaced. “What the hell happened? Aren’t those creeps supposed to be invisible? How come we could see it all of a sudden?”

  “The sensor field,” said Carter. “I don’t know how, maybe it depolarized the transphase envelope or—” The colonel gave her a hard look that said not now and she skipped quickly to the layman’s explanation. “We accidentally blew through its invisibility. Until the discharge wears off, we can see it.”

  Jack seized upon her explanation. “How long?”

  “Could be minutes, maybe less.”

  O’Neill was already running for the door. “Good, great. You’re with me. Jackson! Let Hammond know, and tell him to break out the weapons. I want that oversize roach in a trap!”

  “And Wells?” called Warner. “If she’s an accomplice?”

  “Then we’ll take her down too.”

  Daniel stood for a moment, staring after them as they raced away down the corridor, the adrenaline rush of the sudden mayhem tingling in his limbs. Warner’s words echoed in his thoughts. They’ve used human infiltrators before. But he’d spoken with Hannah Wells, connected with her. Instinctively, he rejected the idea that she might be a human clone, like the boy they had named Charlie. The child had been an attempt by a peaceful faction of Re’tu to communicate with the SGC, to warn of a terrorist cadre of their species intent on attacking Earth; but the violent faction had been driven off five years ago and ceased to be a threat. Hannah wasn’t like the sickly, unfinished boy that had come through the Stargate as an ambassador. She was as human as he was, he could sense it. Human enough to lie to him.

  But Daniel couldn’t deny the moment of revelation when their eyes met as Sam’s sensor sweep rang true. For a single, unguarded instant, the woman had let her mask drop and allowed Jackson to see the real truth of her. He saw fear there, fear and sadness…and shame.

  Jade vaulted along the narrow, high corridor and raced for the T-junction at the far end. Her escape route pushed itself forward to the front of her thoughts, overriding any sense of panic. It was the implant’s doing, she knew. The moment she had started to run, she allowed the mechanism to suppress the production of the neurochemicals in her brain that might induce fright. It allowed her to move with cold, clinical control, her thoughts unfettered and locked on her objective.

  Or at least, it was supposed to. The problem with having a device as complex as the implant melded to something as willful as a human brain was that the two did not always work in tandem. She flashed on a memory of a covert mission from two years ago, on a world devastated by Replicators; on the extraction shuttle, on the way home, her implant had been unable to damp down her fear index and she had burst into a fit of racking, uncontrollable sobs. But that was the price she was willing to pay, to lie and to fight and to lose a little of what made her human, in order to survive.

  Her cheeks were burning. She should have felt nothing, but she didn’t. The dreadful churning of emotion that she had felt in the Holdfast came back. Betrayal. I have betrayed my friends, said an echo inside her. I am
nothing but a liar and a spy.

  Jade shook her head, as if that would make the feeling go away. She came to the junction and met two airmen coming up it at a swift pace. The first saw her and gestured to halt, his M4 pointed down at the floor.

  Jade’s autonomic combatant training was flawless. She made a small running jump and kicked off the closest wall, leading with her other foot to come down on his ankle. He yelled as she broke the bone, and she followed with a sweeping punch that connected hard with his temple. The second airman was faster; he had his assault rifle at the ready and he drew a bead on Jade’s sternum. At so close a range, one bullet would be enough to tear a fist-sized hole through her stomach.

  She was vibrating with tension and barely-caged anxiety. The airman shouted a command at her, but she barely registered it. All she saw was the skittering shape moving inverted along the high ceiling, the shape of a brassy weapon in clawed hands, the actinic flash of a stun ray.

  The second man collapsed to the floor in a nerveless heap, and Ite-kh allowed himself to drop from above, describing a roll in mid-fall to land squarely on his six legs. His eyestalks quivered with concern and the alien extended a limb toward her. The Re’tu’s mouthparts clicked and scraped.

  Jade shook her head, becoming angry. “What are you doing? You know the protocol, we’re not supposed to be together! Disengage, escape, evade. Those are the rules.” She backed away a step.

  Ite-kh made a coarse clattering noise and signed to her. To death with the rules. You must be made safe.

  She ignored his protests. “You’ve lost your camouflage, you’re vulnerable!” Jade stabbed a finger at the pod on the gear belt around Ite-kh’s thorax. “You need to use your pod. It’s got enough energy in reserve for a spatial transit. Get up a couple of levels closer to the surface and you’ll be able to teleport outside the base perimeter.”